This is why the government has approved Preston's 'motorway mosque' - and what local politicians think about it

The government has this week given the go-ahead to the building of the Brick Veil Mosque on land next to the Broughton roundabout at the start of the M55.

The proposal for the place of worship was first approved by Preston City Council’s planning committee 12 months ago, but that decision was then ‘called in’ for consideration by the government following a request from Wyre and Preston North MP Ben Wallace and Preston Rural East ward councillor Graham Jolliffe.

The move led to more than 50 hours of public hearings at Preston Town Hall last summer, chaired by an independent planning inspector who later issued a recommendation to the government that the city council’s approval should be upheld - a stance with which housing and planning minister Lucy Frazer MP has now agreed.

Mr. Wallace, who is also the UK’s defence secretary, has hit out at what he described as the city’s local planning policies being “junked by people who do not live anywhere near the neighbourhood”.

However, city council cabinet member for planning and regulation David Borrow - who also sat on the planning committee which voted by a majority to back the mosque last February - regrets that the matter ever came to a public inquiry.

The authority's own planning officers had recommended that councillors approve the proposal – for a building with a 248 prayer mat capacity - after concluding that although the mosque would not normally be deemed suitable for its proposed location, other material planning considerations “tipped the balance” in favour of the scheme.

The planning inspector and the government have now agreed that such considerations mean that the development should still go ahead.

Cllr Borrow said the fact that the inspector supported the points that he and many of his colleagues had made this time last year and gone into “such detail” about them was “very heartening”.

“He found himself firmly on the side of the committee, but it’s just a pity that [the process] has wasted so much public money,” he added.

However, Pat Hastings, chair of Broughton Parish Council - which opposed the development - told the Local Democracy Reporting Service that the inquiry had been worthwhile, even though she and her colleagues were “disappointed” with the decision.

“We did our best for our parishioners. But we do welcome the conditions [imposed as part of the permission] and hope that these will be adhered to and that Preston City Council will keep a watching brief,” Cllr Hastings said.

Those stipulations include the submission of detailed drainage plans before work on the site can commence, a restriction on the use of the building so that it is solely operated as a mosque and a ban on any “external amplified calls to prayer” from the location.

Cllr Hastings said that the parish authority’s members had “listened to the residents’ views and voted considering the needs of the entire community”.

“We believed it was the right thing to do to turn down the application and maintained our position until we reached the end of the democratic process.

“Broughton Parish Council has no issues with another place of worship in the parish, [but] the proposed site will cause issues with the local transport network and the setting of the parish church as well as [the new] structure showing [an] over development of the site.

“The parish council would like to take this opportunity to thank the consultants who worked diligently to try to achieve the best results for our community.”

AN INSPECTOR’S THOUGHTS

Concerns were raised at last August's public inquiry over a raft of issues related to the proposed mosque. This is what planning inspector Darren Hendley concluded about a selection of them - and about which the government agreed with him.

Need for a mosque

Debate at the inquiry over the demand for a mosque turned on claims about the size of the Muslim population and exactly where Muslim households could be found on maps of council and parish areas. But Mr. Hendley concluded that “people simply do not carry out their day to day activities on the basis of where [administrative] boundaries may be, including for worship”.

“Interested parties in favour of the proposal spoke persuasively in terms of what a mosque means to them in relation to worship and community…[and] said that they are having to travel to other parts of Preston to worship at present.

“The nearest existing mosque lies to the north of the city centre and it does not offer convenient access to the potential users with regard to either walking or cycling catchments, in particular. The existing distribution of mosques is focused on the city centre.

“There is a demonstrable need for the proposal and the need is compelling. It is not therefore a ‘speculative application’,” Mr. Hendley concluded.

He noted that population details from the 2021 census were not available at the time of the inquiry.

Part of Central Lancashire’s planning strategy – an agreement between Preston, Chorley and South Ribble councils, which dates back more than a decade – actively seeks to ensure that local communities have sufficient facilities to meet their needs, including for the purposes of worship.

Traffic impact

The inquiry heard concern over the potential effect of the new mosque on the road network - and also about the sufficiency of the 150-space car park, within which 77 bays would be reserved for people who have shared a car to travel to the facility.

The planning inspector concluded that the greatest level of traffic generation would come from the two Jumah Prayer sessions on Fridays and would be “significantly lower” at all other times.

He noted that parking provision would be less than the established city standard, but that this was a flexible yardstick - especially given that the mosque would come with “a detailed level of car parking management” in the form of a booking system and marshals to administer it. Double yellow lines will also be painted on the relevant section of D’Urton Lane.

The inquiry was also told that the Friends of the Guild Wheel group had suggested how they wanted to see any risk to cyclists and pedestrians mitigated along the stretch of the popular walking and biking route that runs past the entrance to the then proposed mosque.

That amounted to a two-way segregated cycle lane and footway – for shared use – which would be raised from the road level and would give priority to pedestrians and cyclists at the point it crossed the entrance to the mosque car park and also that of a recent housing development.

The friends group wrote to the city council in 2021 to advise them that their concerns relating to the mosque development had been “addressed” as a result, a vote of confidence which the inspector took into account.

Mr. Hendley ultimately considered that the mosque “would not have an unacceptable effect on highway safety by way of traffic generation, car parking [nor its impact on] the Guild Wheel cycling and walking route”.

The open countryside

The categorisation of the site as “open countryside” - even though it had previously been used as a compound for the creation of the Broughton bypass until its opening in 2017 - meant that the type of development being proposed for the plot was not supported by Preston’s own local plan.

However, Darren Hendley said: “There is no sign now of the development that was cleared to make way for the works, including…land that is understood to have been used for grazing. That being said, it was evident from my site visit that there have been significant changes on the site since it was in use as a construction compound. Covering the vast majority of the site is now ruderal vegetation.”

He later added that the site has countryside characteristics “only in as far as it now has the appearance of undeveloped land”, noting that it had previously been recognised that the effect of James Towers Way – the bypass - had been to have an “urbanising effect” on the location to the extent that it should now be considered “semi-urban”.

The inspector also concluded that the proposal “would not unacceptably impact on the rural setting of the village” of Broughton itself some distance away.

Impact on St. John The Baptist Church

The inspector concluded that there would be “some disruption to the setting” of the parish church, because the proposal would involve building on open land which once formed part of its “rural hinterland”.

“The proposal would [produce] a building of not insignificant size and scale. Nevertheless, the setting has already been markedly altered by the construction of James Towers Way [which] dissects the land between the church and the site.

“The effect that this major element of road infrastructure has had on the setting of the church is not to be downplayed,” Darren Hendley said.

He assessed that the plans would have “an unacceptable effect on the significance of a designated heritage asset”.

Overall conclusion

The planning inspector concluded that “the harm” that would arise from the proposal stemmed from it being in conflict with the local development plan ”as a whole”, as well as the impact it would have on the significance of the church - which he put at the “lower end of the scale of less than substantial harm”.

However, he and the Levelling Up Secretary, Michael Gove - on whose behalf the minister, Lucy Frazer, made the decision - considered that the latter issue was outweighed by the public benefits of the mosque and, overall, that “material considerations” meant that permission should be granted for the building in spite of the development plan breach.